James Comey book – live reading: Fired FBI director finally reveals all about the 'pee tape', Trump's hands and more

Find all the highlights and the best summary – as we do

James Comey: 'I don't know if the current president of the United States was peed on by prostitutes in 2013'

James Comey has finally published the book on his time with Donald Trump – showing the White House in some of its most revealing and damaging hours.

The fired FBI director gives an incredibly personal and critical account of the president, including the size of his hands and his panicked reaction to the dossier that claimed there existed a video depicting him engaging in lewd behaviour with sex workers.

The book was intended to be released next week. But with parts of it leaking over the last few hours, its contents are now becoming public – and the world is finally learning deep secrets about two of the most powerful people in the world.

Please allow a moment for the live blog to load

[13 April 2018 19:46 · Andrew Griffin]

(The acknowledgments, by the way, come after this epilogue, and include one strange little note:

"Because a group of people cared enough to tell me the truth, I think this book will be useful."

I don't know what this means. Comey then goes on to thank all the expected people. And then writes:

"Thank you for the joy and the journey, which isn't over yet.")

[13 April 2018 20:02 · Andrew Griffin]

With that, our live reading comes to a close. But in case you want my thoughts after skimming through all this, here are some:

Comey is obsessed with principles. Throughout, he doesn't seem like an especially shrewd operator – in fact, when it comes down to practicalities, he's a very awkward man who fails to make the best of any situation. But he explains that to himself by talking in the most idealistic terms: he couldn't have done anything else, morally, and was forced into this situation because he's a good person.

That makes him the worst possible foe for someone like Trump, who is all practicalities. Even in Comey's accounts of their conversations it feels like neither understands the other.

Everything could have gone differently. Comey is keen on absolving himself: in the most momentous situations, he couldn't have done anything else – and besides, if he could, he surely chose the best option available to him. But that's just not true. Even in this book – shaped as it is by him – you're continually yelling out to him to just be a little more savvy, to either opt for being conciliatory or scheming but not to take the middle way and miss both. We could be in a very situation if he did – the Trump presidency would be a very different thing, and it might not have happened at all.

This is not a business book, but thinks it's one. In order of things that are interesting about this book, are: Trump's presidency, Comey's directorship, thoughts on leadership. The ex-FBI boss is obsessed with referring back his thoughts on how to be a leader, but those observations mostly boil down to fairly unremarkable, cliched truisms.

​Something else is going to happen. Is Comey thinking of running for office? He's definitely keen on thinking about what a leader is. He's definitely interested in painting himself as a good person. And he is interesting in making some strange, mysterious comments about the future. This could be the end result of his time in the weirdest White House ever; it could also be the beginnings of his attempt to start a new administration there.

Trump is still a mystery. Here's the central thing that this book shares with the last one to make such a stir – Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. They're both very good at describing Trump's actions, his physicality, what he does, how he acts. Both of them are awful at understanding who Trump is, and thereby just as bad at offering any suggestion of what he might do in the future. Is that because there's nothing inside Trump's head? Because he's so resistant to any kind of depth? Or because nobody has yet managed to burrow into that strange mind? We still have no idea.